Notes on Franfurk

German sausages commonly arouse Spanish bar owners to orthographical orgasm, but this is perhaps the most beautiful, and at first sight most puzzling spelling of Frankfurt in the peninsula:

No time to inquire her ancestry of the lady at this magnificent tapas bar in the Creueta del Coll park, Barcelona, but one suspects the Dread Hand of Andalusia. One of the defining characteristics of the Noble and Ancient Language of Manuel Chaves is its treatment of final consonants. The most notorious is the aspirated final s, but others misbehave as well. What I think happened here:

• The k and t have gone AWOL alla Andaluza: {frank-furt} → {fran-fur}
• The signwriter is aware that in the conventional written form the final r is followed by a voiceless plosive, and by an extraordinary stroke of misfortune plumps for k instead of t. It could have been worse: imagine trying to order a franfurp.

Back-formation “refers to the process of creating a new lexeme … by removing actual or supposed affixes.” I don’t know what linguists call the opposite–the process of creating a new sausage by adding saucy extras–but we need to know, here in Spain.

[
Could franfurk become a regional speciality?
]

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